Kinsler: Musical inspiration from mixing tunes

If you live inside your head for an extended period of time, thoughts can connect with one another. Lately, this has extended to music.

I have somehow become fascinated with songs that have similar tunes. I once read in The Whole Earth Catalog (circa 50 years ago) that you can sing Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” to the tune of “Hernando’s Hideaway,” which comes from the Broadway show “Pajama Game.”

I found myself on an inadvertent bicycle ride one afternoon when something went wrong with my motorbike and I had to pedal it the rest of the way to Menard’s and then back home again. Apparently, I must think a lot when I’m doing hard physical labor because by the time I got to Ety Road, I’d discovered that Billy Joel’s contemplative song “Piano Man” can be sung to the tune of “The Mexican Hat Dance.” Try it.

And only yesterday inspiration struck again. I was working on a 60-year-old carburetor when I found myself humming the main title theme of the movie “Chariots of Fire,” which I always liked. Thoughts connected like polymer molecules under high pressure, so I brought it up on YouTube to check my theory. Every one of the comments on the video burst with love and enthusiasm, that this song was an inspiring one, which it is.

Dare I spoil everyone’s enjoyment? Of course. I posted a brief comment: “You can sing this to the tune of ‘On Top of Old Smokey.’

I’d thought that it might be fun to establish an Internet list of songs like these. I only have two such songs, but there have to be more of them. A Google search was clearly in order.

Google implied that I am lucky to be breathing. There are indeed several videos and/or websites that list popular songs with identical melodies. I have never heard any of them. Not one. Further research revealed that I must have aged out of popular music between 1972 and maybe 1985, and alas, I recognized almost nothing past 2002.

My obsolete calculator claims that 1985 was 39 years ago. But 39 years before 1985 was 1946, one year prior to my arrival. That year Bing Crosby, Kay Kyser, and the Andrews Sisters ruled the charts. And don’t forget the Modernaires and Vaughn Monroe. I wasn’t listening to much music then.

Worse yet, I was in my musical prime in 1966, one year after I graduated from high school, which was 58 tuneful years ago. Nobody much listened to truly golden oldies in 1966, for 58 years before that it was 1908.

Arright. So my idea would appeal to those whose principal occupation is (to quote Vera G Kinsler) pushing up daisies. But I remain grateful that Natalie and I have been blessed with long lives even as our relevance dwindles. We lucked out.

Mark Kinsler, kinsler33@gmail.com, who has discovered that Microsoft Word thinks I made up the Modernaires, lives in Lancaster with Natalie and a pair of skeptical alley cats.

This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Kinsler: Aging out of popular music between 1972 and 1985